Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 June 16

= June 16 =

Pound sign as letter
The Chiricahua article contains the statement £igá' means "it is white". There's no mention of the currency symbol being used as a character in the £ article. Should it be the Ł L with stroke or Ɫ L with middle tilde instead?


 * Our article Ł says “Ł or ł, described in English as L with stroke, is a letter of the West Slavic (Polish, Kashubian, and Sorbian), Łacinka (Latin Belarusian), Łatynka (Latin Ukrainian), Wymysorys, Navajo, Dene Suline, Inupiaq, Zuni, Hupa, and Dogrib alphabets”. Since this mentions several Indian languages, this is probably what was intended. Loraof (talk) 14:23, 16 June 2018 (UTC)


 * I've tried to find a source, and gives "it is white" as łì-gài. I'm now going to fix the article, adding this citation. --31.168.25.105 (talk) 15:14, 16 June 2018 (UTC)


 * It might be an old variant of Americanist phonetic notation, though I'm not familiar with it, and it's not listed in Pullum and Ladusaw's Phonetic Symbol Guide... AnonMoos (talk) 15:59, 16 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Note the pound sign was used for (!) in the Turkmen Latin alphabet shortly during the early 1990s. --Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 20:14, 16 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Chiricahua łigáí is cognate with Navajo łigai. —Stephen (talk) 02:13, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Name that rhetorical technique
Here's an easy one for ya. What do you call it when people talk like this?

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians)

Whether pagan or Christian, whether man or woman, whether boy or girl, whether slave or free whoever has stolen from me, Annianus [son of] Matutina (?), six silver coins from my purse, you, Lady Goddess, are to exact [them] from him. If through some deceit he has given me...and do not give thus to him but reckon as (?) the blood of him who has invoked his upon me. (Bath curse tablets) Temerarius (talk) 17:52, 16 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Archaism? —2606:A000:1126:4CA:0:98F2:CFF6:1782 (talk) 05:48, 17 June 2018 (UTC)


 * "Archaism" is a literary style, not really a rhetorical strategy. Antithesis is much closer... AnonMoos (talk) 07:30, 17 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Even so, it's an old-fashioned way of writing. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:20, 17 June 2018 (UTC)
 * If you're referring to the pairing of contrasting terms, such as Jew/Gentile and slave/free, I think AnonMoos's suggestion of antithesis is correct. If you're referring to the parallelism of the neither ... neither ... nor and whether constructions, I think the term is isocolon, though our article isn't too clear. Deor (talk) 16:49, 17 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Vocabulary word of the day: "isocolon" —2606:A000:1126:4CA:0:98F2:CFF6:1782 (talk) 20:40, 17 June 2018 (UTC)